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This week was to have been the time to have the show string inspected for their ABGA Visual Inspection Certificates. The inspector was due to arrive soon and the candidates needed to be separated from the herd. By the time Carol and the inspector arrived at the farm the goats to be inspected were supposed to be in the pen by the barn.
But when Carol arrived she was greeted with the announcement that Kandace was not with the herd! Kandace was pregnant as were most of the show string - perhaps she'd wandered away from the herd to have her kids.
A thorough search of the property revealed several facts... there were three full blood goats missing - all pregnant. There were no holes in the fence, no carcasses, no telltale signs of struggles with coyotes and the guardian dog was happily watching her herd. Two sections of fence panel had been removed from the outside and then fastened back in place with twisted wire.
The county sheriff wasn't very interested in investigating the crime until he was told that Kandace was a $9,000.00 goat. Even then he could only take a report and offered little hope for catching the thief.
Those goats sure wouldn't be useful to anyone as breeding stock unless forged registration papers were available. The nearest the sheriff can figure is that some day laborers, hired a few weeks earlier for casual work on the farm, came back and took the three pregnant show does thinking that the goats would make a great meal. The chances of one of them just walking into the station and confessing are so close to zero as to be totally discounted.
Carol is giving up! In a telephone interview last evening she confessed to me that the goats are her "kids". They were also supposed to provide a retirement income source. But the pressure of the loss and other factors have resulted in her decision to sell all but a few of the herd that she has worked so hard to establish.
"I am distressed and before I lose any more I am trying to sell most of my herd", she said. "I have some ennobled females and General, who is a Kaptein son, and 40 ET's due in the coming weeks, most of them General babies, with moms that were champions or with wonderful pedigrees. I'd hate to sell them at auction but I don't know what else to do. I also have some unregistered does bred to General that I have to sell".
Well, Carol... perhaps some of the boergoats.com readers might be interested in helping you out.
I doubt that anyone out there is going to talk her out of General for a few hundred dollars. But I think she'd rather sell him, and her other good stock, at private treaty for reasonable prices instead of sending them to the sale barn.
Check out her web site at http://www.lehmannlegacy.com - there are some nice photos of what she has to offer. Maybe you'll find something you can't resist.
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